"Our forecast is that our leisure hotels will recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2022"- Gabriel Escarrer Jaume
Gabriel Escarrer Jaume
How is the year 2022 looking in terms of business revival for Meliá? Which are the best performing properties of your group and where are the tourists coming from?
We started the year suffering the impact of the Omicron variant of Covid-19, but since mid-February we began an upward path where reservations rebounded strongly, increasing week after week; finally, we have just experienced a historic Easter Week, two points above the occupancy figures of 2019, and well above the income of that year.
The prospects for the summer, as the third quarter is the highest season in the Mediterranean area, are also positive and we hope to slightly exceed the excellent holiday season that we experienced in 2019. We have many hotels in Spain, and it is considered as a particularly safe destination and close to the large European source markets such as the United Kingdom, Germany or France, which have once again made Spanish holiday destinations leaders.
In Spain, the destinations that are working best are the Canary Islands, with some emblematic hotels such as Gran Meliá Palacio de Isora, that stand out, as well as some hotels in the Costa del Sol and the Balearic Islands. As for customers, the main source market continues to be the domestic market, Spanish travellers, who have resisted better throughout the pandemic due to the blockade of international mobility, followed by the British, who are returning to travel strongly, and Germans, although the strong increase in travellers from France stands out.
How badly were you hit by the pandemic and how long would you take to come back to pre-pandemic levels?
As a global hotel group, we were strongly hit by the closure of global mobility, which had never happened before; like all the travel-related companies we have of course lost value, but we managed to handle the crisis in an excellent way, and were able to minimise its worst impacts, focusing on our people and customers, our liquidity and balance, and the continuity of operations, and to keep investing in our digital and cultural transformation, to prepare the company for the new post-pandemic hyper-competitive environment.
We are coming out of this crisis stronger and more efficient and resilient for the future. Our forecast is that our leisure hotels will recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, while it could take a little longer for the urban & MICE segment, where we hope to see full recovery by 2023. Overall, we expect the company to come back to 2019 financial levels by 2024.
Were you obliged to put on hold your expansion/renovation plans? If so, by when will they come back on track?
Globally speaking, practically all the openings planned during the months of the pandemic had to be delayed or postponed, but I am happy to confirm that the market experienced a strong reactivation since the 4th Quarter of 2021, so in just 6 months (until the 1st quarter of 2022) we signed the incorporation of 42 hotels (with almost 11,000 rooms), almost tripling the volume of signatures of the last pre-pandemic years. In addition, we have opened 13 establishments in that period. For this reason, I have the utmost confidence that as of 2022, we will return to the normal growth rate, and even faster, although with some differences, as the market is undergoing changes.
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Has the pandemic obliged you to exit any market or cancel/delay entry into any new market?
The pandemic has not forced us to exit or cancel any markets, but definitely, we have strengthened our development strategic focus on the areas in which we are already leaders and highly competitive, such as what we call the “leisure axis”, which includes the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and Southern Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia.
How important is India as a source market for Meliá? What are your plans to reach out to Indian clientele?
India is amongst the top economies in Asia and a very key trading partner for most countries. Along with business travel, leisure travel has grown tremendously. Weddings and incentive groups are other key areas of growth given the disposable incomes available. Of particular interest are Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, which have emerged as the home of the corporate leaders. Our GSA – Outbound Marketing, has been with us on our journey for the past six years with Tonia Sehan who has been the face for Meliá in India. Even during the pandemic, we have been active with having virtual webinars and presentations. This has allowed us to hit the ground running once economies opened again.
Meliá Hotels International
Do you customise the offer for Indian visitors? If so, how?
Yes, most certainly. Just like most strong cultures, Indians, especially when they travel in groups for weddings or events, require customisation. We have customised MICE deals and also wedding packages for Indian weddings.
What about India as a destination for your properties? By when do you plan to open here?
We are aware that the Indian hotel market is extraordinarily interesting as well as competitive, so we are closely watching and following it, but we try to be very consistent in our expansion. When entering a “new” region for us, thus, we must be able to ensure volume and quality, as the basis for a sustainable and healthy growth.
Which are your priorities in India as tourism revives?
We have reidentified our key clients list and cities we need to focus on. New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata. Ahmedabad, Bengaluru are of particular importance. In these cities we are trying to participate in various events.
There have also been announcements of new flights like Kolkata to Vietnam and New Delhi to Vietnam. All this helps grow our business through collaborations and sales blitz where it is required. I think more than any strategy, at the moment it is required to be dynamic, flexible and having an ear to the ground to get the business, which we are doing in India.
Are you also hit by shortage of workers?
I think that the need for talent is a global issue nowadays, aggravated by the perception of vulnerability of the travel industry as a whole; I am confident, however, that the progress of digital transformation of the economy will promote a transfer of talent and workers from other sectors to the hospitality and the leisure industry, where people will still be as necessary as ever to provide a personalised service, despite the digitisation of the more mechanical and transactional activities in the back office.
Despite this post-Covid acceleration, Meliá Hotels International has a long-established strategy in place for attracting, retaining and cultivating the best talent, with a focus on improving professional skills (reskilling/upskilling of knowledge), continuous development in terms of digitisation and new tools, in addition to the inclusion of specific content for the sector, and also using our online training platform e-Meliá, with the objective of offering global and targeted training to the needs of hotel teams. For this, training itineraries have been created personalised by profiles in the language of each region where the company operates, currently having training content in more than 15 languages.
Our constant commitment to people, at a time of competition for the talent, never experienced before, has been recognised with the top certification Employer 2022 for Meliá Hotels International, as one of the companies that most contributes to the excellence of the work environment in some of the countries in which we operate with greater critical mass, such as Spain, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
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